"The Wisdom of Whores"

Elizabeth Pisani’s The Wisdom of Whores is an unsettling glimpse into a world full of “hookers”, “junkies”, “gays” and “trannys”, where the vilest of them all are the silk suited, air-plane hopping, number punching, self righteous research consultants and their mother organizations that have capitalized on the booming “AIDS Industry”, pocketing much of the funding for their invaluable services of not coming up with accurate data, of not curbing the rates of newer infections and of not being able to provide care for the already infected. She lays out the harsh facts about organized mal-practice and mis-information like a “butcher with satin gloves on”.

The eternal shortage of funding for AIDS is in most part due to the bottomless pockets of those involved in working towards its alleviation. The reality is that even a portion of all that wasted money is sufficient to make a critical change and provide care for the needy. The tragedy is that AIDS has become too profitable for anyone, apart from the infected and a few others, to really want to eradicate. The same principles of profit that deny Universal Health Care, equal land ownership, etc. are responsible for the ineffective and down right indifference towards complete alleviation of AIDS.

I could not resist contemplating on the “AIDS scene” of Nepal while reading The Wisdom of Whores. Like most third world countries, Nepal too has an army of International Non-Government Organizations (INGOs) like the UN, WHO, ILO, etc. that seem to have set up permanent base in the context of battling AIDS. Many of my friends who have recently graduated with degrees in Development Studies, Social Work and Sociology try to get into these organizations. For them, it is a place to be compensated for their hard earned degrees, and at the same time feel legitimate for contributing to society. That fine line between Public and Academic Sociology exists within other disciplines as well. Do we use our knowledge for sheer academic and theoretical purposes or do we act upon what we know, even if it means less compensation and a lot more effort? It is no wonder most people choose the easiest way to go about things. In today’s world we’re all economists who carefully weigh our opportunity costs before making any decisions. Same goes with our professions. We choose whichever one is the most beneficial to us, rather than to our cause. There are only a few people like Pisani who make unpopular choices of sticking to their cause by transcending personal benefits. It was really interesting for me to see a vivid and concrete example of Academic Vs. Public Sociology, in Pisani’s transition from one to the other.

Another aspect of the book that really struck me was how we as professionals so often take data as mere statistics. We forget that the statistic actually represents a person. I agree that it helps us remain value free and emotionally detached but at what cost? We fail to acknowledge that lifeless statistic as a human in a unique social circumstance. In doing so, we ignore the different realities of people in specific space and time contexts. Pisani uses Faud to illustrate this point very effectively. While Faud would be seen as nothing more than a statistic according to conventional data analysis, in reality he is a complicated being with a number of behavioral patterns that can be labeled or not, according to the culture he hails from. He considers himself a straight man that has an active sex life with his “decent” girlfriend who is a prostitute, gives blow jobs to other men strictly for monetary reasons, while occasionally getting a blow job from a ‘wari’ (transgender person) to reinforce his masculinity. Strictly as a statistic, Faud would appear to have a unidimensional character with linear relationships with other statistics. However, Faud as an individual is a multidimensional character that has reciprocal relationships with his prostitute girlfriend and the other people he has sexual relationships with. Pisani points out that using people as just statistics contributes to the inaccuracy of a study because it fails to take into consideration a variety of factors that are essential to our proper understanding of whats really going on. The networks of human relationships cannot be studied through only numbers, we need to study the choices, behavioral patterns, likes/dislikes, etc. of people. The task might be too monumental to have a thorough study of every individual but at least we can vary our research according to cultural and recurring trends in specific areas.

Indonesia like most other Asian countries is in a transition towards modernization while still retaining many of its traditional value and belief systems. On the one hand it strives towards numerous modern aspirations such as Freedom in Sexuality and Expression while on the other it still treats these topics as Taboo. Because of the dialectical nature of this transitory phase it is extremely difficult to introduce new preventive strategies such as “abstinence” and condom use to effectively curb the spread of HIV infections. Traditional sentiments towards sex remain deeply rooted in the minds of its people. In itself that is not a bad thing. However these sentiments developed over a period of time during which the risk of contracting HIV was absent. In the present context, that risk is astronomically high. Thus, the necessity to “tweak” traditional sentiments towards sex in order to grapple with the imminent dangers of HIV infections is very crucial. The most effective way to do this is through education and creating awareness. As Pisani observed at Rawa Malang, a major red-light area near Jakarta, medical stores advertised a galaxy of “sexual enhancement” drugs but “not a condom to be seen”. In the absence of awareness, even free condom distribution will be met with indifference and remain ineffective.

Before we come to the conclusion that “Sex Education” therefore should be included into the school curricula and that would promote “safer sex” practices which would then lead to a decrease in newer HIV infections and thus inhibit its spread, we need to consider who are most susceptible to HIV in the society. Usually, its those who don’t go to school or cant afford to go to school. Since trying to provide equal access to education for all is tackling another “Social Problem”, we will leave it as it is for now. However, identifying the interests and general haunts of these “at risk” uneducated groups allows us to infuse messages of awareness into things they are most likely to come across in their daily routines. For example, going to the cinema is a major recreational activity for most underprivileged people, especially in Third World Countries due to the fact that many of them do not have TVs at home. Hence, if messages emphasizing on what AIDS is, its effects, the risks of having unprotected sex, and the importance of condom use are shown to the audiences before a movie starts it would get through to a large number of people. If that would be too taboo, then incorporating messages about AIDS or basing the storyline around someone infected with AIDS in the movie itself would be highly effective too. Other methods through which awareness can be spread could be Billboard Signs, Posters, Health Workshops in specific areas and street theatres.

While Religion can play a great role in promoting abstinence, it is difficult to rely on in a country like Indonesia that has multitude of ethnic and religious groups. However, if all the leaders of the major religions of that country got together and decided to incorporate awareness activities in their Churches, Mosques and Temples, then I think it’d be highly effective. Unfortunately, religious intolerance and violence remain pervasive, and putting to much “faith” in religion to solve these social problems might deem too optimistic. The struggle is not really to create a perfect world; it already is perfect in its essence and place in the universe. The struggle is to promote wellbeing to its inhabitants. And unless that becomes our genuine collective priority, our “calling”; well-being will be limited, and like all limited things with high demand it will come with a very expensive price tag. The solution is really a very simple one: we all need to work together for each other’s well being because in doing so we will be guaranteeing our own.

All in all, this is an extremely insightful book not just into the world of AIDS but also into the role of the scholar. The eternal debate between Academic and Public Sociology reverberates throughout this book like a giant Chinese gong. Statistic or human? Profit or well-being? Academic or Public?